Cisco Business-Class Email

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The commoditization of the Internet coupled with the widespread adoption of smartphones has made email the most widely used and most critical communication tool around the world—more so than social media or micro-blogging. Millions of emails are sent daily. Unfortunately, email technologies have several limitations:

●It's difficult to ensure the confidentiality of unencrypted information sent over email; it goes through the network in clear text and can be easily intercepted.

●It's difficult to ascertain if an email has reached its recipient(s) and if/when it was opened and read.

●There is no reliable way to recall email messages.

●Senders have no control over whom the recipient will forward the data to.

These shortcomings can prove difficult for organizations that need to comply with regulatory requirements or protect themselves from data leakage.

The Cisco Business-Class Email solution provides enhanced security and reliable controls for traditional email tools. It is fully integrated into the most common email technologies and into a user's daily email routine. The three components of the Business-Class Email solution are confidentiality, seamless user authentication, and enhanced email controls.

●Confidentiality: Cisco Business-Class Email is based on robust technology that uses the most reliable email encryption algorithms available. The solution not only encrypts the data to protect its confidentiality while it travels through the network, but also applies the latest authentication mechanisms to make access to the encryption key easy and secure.

●Seamless user authentication: The solution uses Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) to authenticate and verify the identity of email recipients. This unique implementation enables Cisco to provide strong authentication while retaining ease of use for the recipients. Once the user is registered with the SAML gateway, they can use their corporate login credentials to access encrypted emails as easily as they access other company resources.

●Enhanced email controls: Secure messaging enables Cisco to provide new email controls for users. Encrypted emails ensure that the information sent remains confidential and enable the sender to expire or recall an email and know exactly when the email was opened. This capability is now available on popular enterprise mail clients. The specific features are described below.

◦Read receipt: When a recipient opens a message (meaning the user successfully authenticated and the recipient received the encryption key), Cisco ensures that the information was read and delivers a read receipt to the sender within seconds.

◦Guaranteed message recall: When the sender selects the recall option, the key to decrypt the data expires, making it impossible for anybody to access the content of the message.

◦Message expiration: Enables the sender to set an expiration date to the message. After the expiration date has passed, the encryption key will be disposed of, making the information inaccessible.

◦Control over forward/reply: Provides advanced controls over what can be done to an email message once it has been received. Forward/Reply/Reply All can be disabled or enabled only if the sender's company authorizes it.

Cisco Business Class Email changes the sender's experience by providing more control, including read receipts, email recall, email expiration, and control over forward/reply capabilities, right in their favorite email client. The Business Class Email solution removes the complexity of encryption and key management, enabling users to send and received secure messages as easily as unencrypted emails. Cisco offers unique smartphone support to deliver the same experience to mobile users that corporate users enjoy.